It is said that hairstyling using permanent wave and other techniques is as important to the modem woman as her livelihood. The woman considers a hairstyle, achieved through various types of processing such as cutting, permanent waving and coloring, as an important element in the creation of a favorable impression. In other words, a desired hairstyle is achieved through a combination of permanent waving, cutting and blow-drying. However, since it is difficult for most women to design the desired hairstyles on their own, they are actually unable to direct their beauticians to ensure that their hair is styled according to what is desired.
Conventionally, the female customer at a beauty salon determines her favorite types of cutting, coloring and permanent waving by referring to hairstyle models (images of hairstyle samples), hairstyle designs featured in magazines, the beautician's advice and so forth. The customer then verbally places her order with the beautician, who in turn processes the customer's hair according to the requested hairstyle. Alternatively, the beautician may process the customer's hair according to what the beautician recalls the customer's customary, desired hairstyle to have been. Another alternative is to leave the entire process up to the beautician. Evidently, due to the absence of accurate documentation on the customer's favorite mode of hair processing, much of it depends on the beautician's sensitivity and skill. Cutting, coloring, permanent waving and the like are normally employed at the discretion of the beautician.
Adult hair strands range in diameter from 0.09 to 0.5 mm, on the average. Anywhere from 100,000 to 150,000 strands of hair, grown to approximately 50 percent, cover the head despite the natural process of hair loss (50 to 100 strands per day). A hair grows about 1.1 to 1.3 cm over a period of a month, necessitating cutting and permanent waving once every four to five weeks, although requirements vary among individuals. The female customer orders her desired hairstyle each time she visits a beauty salon for a haircut and permanent wave. It isn't at all rare that the customer will feel dissatisfied with some imperfect conformance of the finished hairstyle to the one she desired, although the beautician's skills are a factor in that. For this reason the customer tends to return to the same salon, and the salon assigns the same beautician to that customer each time she returns. Still, it is difficult to process customers' hairstyles exactly as they want, given the infinite variations in hairstyle requests. Even if the beautician achieves the customer's favorite hairstyle once, it is virtually impossible to get the same result at the next permanent-wave session.
Hairstyling includes hair setting with curlers and blow-styling using instruments such as a dryer and brush. The process of hair setting normally involves rolling strands of hair around curlers and then drying, followed by setting the entire hairstyle. Blow-styling normally entails dividing the head of hair into several parts and drying individual parts separately, in sequence, with a dryer in order to achieve a final, overall style. In the conventional hairstyling, the customer gradually arrives at a final hairstyle that would best suit her by referring to a photograph of a desired hairstyle sample pasted to the mirror while consulting with the beautician. Examples of this method are disclosed in Japanese Utility Model Application Laid-open Nos. 58-48180, 59-98821, 59-98822, 60-64722 and 5-91519. However, it is still difficult to style each customer's hair exactly as desired by the customer and to reproduce the ideal hairstyle, given the unique characteristics of each customer's head and face. Three-dimensional head models with simulated strands of synthetic fiber or animal or human hair planted thereon have been used but never for the purpose of reproducing a given hairstyle.
Methods for the design of a customer's desired hairstyle are known, wherein the desired hairstyle is designed through constant reference to a hairstyle model and a predicted hairstyle pattern for the customer displayed on a TV monitor or computer. Examples of such methods are disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Nos. 58-97306, 56-109616, 60-45303, 7-67721, 9-98834 and 10-14655. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to achieve a hairstyle precisely as desired by any one customer simply by applying the displayed three-dimensional visual information to the hairstyling process, given that the head and facial shapes vary from one customer to the next.
To solve the foregoing problems, the inventors of the present invention proposed a hairstyling method based on the use of numerals and/or symbols in Japanese Patent Application No. 2000-001315. That invention aims to design a hairstyle precisely as desired by the customer, and to fully implement and reproduce the hairstyling process in accordance with the desired hairstyle. Accordingly, the desired hairstyle is translated into numerals and/or symbols. Those numerals and/or symbols are then entered on a prescribed “head-development drawing” to finalize the hairstyle. The hair is then styled with reference to the drawing.